What We Believe

Published November 03, 2009 @ 06:59AM PT

Thanks to Gideon at A Public Defender, I recently came across some powerful essays from prisoners on the beliefs they hold at their core.

The essays come from “This I Believe, ” an essay and podcast series exploring the core beliefs we hold in our day to day lives, inspired by a 1950s radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow. I’ve heard some incredible personal stories on this podcast and on NPR over the last few years, and this group of prisoner essays is no exception.

John, a prisoner in Massachusetts, writes of the cruel Catch-22 of his life: it wasn’t until he got to prison that he realized he had value to others, and now that he’s there he worries that he can’t have the impact he’s meant to have:

The worst part about prison isn’t the violence or the loss of freedom, it’s not being a part of anything that’s good and decent. And it’s the fear that I don’t matter to anyone.

A man named Jim writes that he doesn’t know what he believes -- and maybe that’s why he ended up at a federal prison camp. The president of Oglethorpe University in Georgia writes about the human dignity he saw on a visit to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison.

Carla, a prisoner in Florida, asserts that she has yet to find a person who is all bad, and that people have an essential goodness. “I believe that no person is defined by their worst action, decision or mistake,” she writes.

Gideon added his own “This I Believe” essay to the mix, on his blog.

“Man is neither inherently good nor bad,” he writes. “I believe that we all have a breaking point; a point at which “we” become “them”. Some of the nicest, most docile men that I have met are those that have taken another life. Some of the angriest, most close-minded men are those that seek to judge others without recognizing the same capacity in themselves.”

There’s nothing like crime and punishment and freedom and incarceration to force us to consider what we believe -- and what we’re willing to do for those beliefs.

Here's my own: I believe that by raising the level of awareness and discussion about justice and our prison system, we can reexamine the way we treat prisoners, defendants and victims of crime, and we can build a more effective, and more human, system.

These podcasts and essays, from Gideon and the prisoners who share their stories, are helping us move along this path.

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Comments (1)

If you want to understand them, then you need to * breathe into their lives * (1) see their experience (some defining moments that when problems faced upon them, how they went through them. (2) go into their mind, (how they made their decisions, I mean some people did made the crime not by the nature, but by a wrong decision, you know maybe they feels regret for it). (3) go into their nature (what they like or dislike, how strong is his moral sense, and will he swear for a change, is he such a liar to lie to other people again.) after all, i have to say that it's complicated to say we can save all of them, but it can be easier for me to say most of them, can change, and will change. and to these people, we need to trust them, welcome them back to the society.

Posted by r x on 11/03/2009 @ 07:41PM PT
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Matt has worked and volunteered in various capacities in criminal justice reform for several years. When he's not blogging, he works as the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project. Views expressed here are Matt's, and don't represent the positions of the Innocence Project.